It's another night where they're having dinner at home - a simple pasta salad Mina had whipped up. Jihyo offers to do the dishes, and Mina gives her a grateful smile before retreating into her room to indulge in a relaxing bath.
When she's done with the dishes, Jihyo heads upstairs to her own room, already thinking of changes she wants to make to some of the lyrics she had written the other day.
She's just putting the finishing touches on her doodle of a paper boat when there's a soft knock on her door and a second later, Mina's sheepish smile lights up the room.
"I'm having a sudden craving for an acai bowl," Mina explains when Jihyo tilts her head in question.
"Okay," Jihyo closes her notebook and walks over to the wardrobe, grabbing a cardigan to pull over her tank top. "Let's go get one, then."
It takes 15 minutes to drive to the food truck that sells the best acai bowl this side of the island, according to Mina. Jihyo sits in the passenger seat of Mina's car and Mina fills the silence with funny little anecdotes from her everyday life on the island. Jihyo listens to the soothing lilt of Mina's voice and the giggles she lets out whenever she remembers a particularly amusing story about a tourist or an amateur surfer. Jihyo listens, and she doesn't ask when Mina got her driving license or whether impromptu random drives to get dessert at 10pm is something Mina does on a regular basis.
Even in winter, it's still a little too warm to sit outside, so Mina gets a takeaway acai bowl with a bunch of extra toppings for them to share and hands it to Jihyo so she can drive them back. Jihyo alternates between feeding herself and feeding Mina, feeling a kind of joy spark in her whenever Mina hums in delight at every spoonful.
They settle on the bean bags in front of the television, passing the bowl back and forth between them. It's easy - the kind of comfortable silence Jihyo loves sharing with Mina, before everything else got in the way.
It makes Jihyo pensive though, this silence. It always has. Or maybe it's just the fact that it's been a long time since she's had the chance to experience it with Mina. On the heels of her pensive mood comes Nayeon's voice. There's an exception to every rule, Jihyo-yah. And for Mina, that's always been you.
The words echo in her head, crowd the rest of her thoughts out because she's here, on a bean bag in Mina's actual home, and not in a random hotel room.
"Am I the only one of our friends who have seen this?"
Mina's forehead creases in confusion. "This?"
"This," Jihyo waves her hand around, trying to ignore the way her stomach has started to knot. "You. Like this, in your home."
Carefully, meticulously, Mina sets down the empty bowl on the floor. And then just as slowly, meets Jihyo's eyes with an unreadable look. "If you're asking, you already know the answer."
"I don't understand how you can just -"
"Just what?" Mina cuts in, an uncharacteristic flash of warning in her eyes that Jihyo ignores because god, this is so long overdue and Jihyo is tired of keeping words locked behind her teeth.
"I don't understand how you can just sweep everything under the carpet and forget about it. Like nothing happened between us, like all of this is normal."
Mina exhales sharply, and then it tapers into a dry, humourless laugh. Jihyo's ears are ringing and her heart is starting to ache along familiar fractured wounds.
"Nothing did happen between us, Jihyo. You made sure of that," Mina points out, voice serrated around the edges. Then, she closes her eyes and takes in a deep, shaky breath. When she opens them again, her eyes are liquid, losing all of their heat from earlier. "I'm sorry, that's unfair of me. But I just - for what it's worth, you're wrong. I haven't forgotten anything. I haven't forgotten that kiss, just as much as you haven't forgotten it either, Jihyo-yah."
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MiHyo Oneshots (AO3)
FanfictionI do not own any of the contents in here. All credits to the original owners from AO3.
